- “Given America’s large-scale, long-term nation-building mission in Afghanistan, another chapter remains unfinished.”
- “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to refer to a government whose intelligence service assists military efforts by al Qaeda and the Taliban against U.S. troops in Afghanistan as an ‘ally.’ ”
- “Terrorists are not superhuman.”
- “Physicians must either make up for this shortfall by shifting costs to those patients with insurance — meaning those of us with insurance pay more — or treat patients at a loss.”
- Is America in a libertarian moment?
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Conservatives Win, Socialists Up, Liberals Down, Separatists Out
The conventional wisdom is that the United States is a center-right country while Canada is a center-left one. Yet, even as the most-left-wing president in history occupies the White House, last night the Conservative Party of Canada — which had already been steering its ship of state in a fiscally prudent direction despite only having a plurality of seats in Parliament — won a decisive victory. Prime Minister Stephen Harper will thus lead the first first majority government by any party since 2004 (after the first election creating a majority government since 2000).
How can this be?
The answer comes down to three main factors:
- Electoral system. Canada has a multi-party first-past-the-post parliamentary system that currently features one united center-right party and an opposition split among two major left-wing parties, Quebec separatists, and a not-inconsequential Green Party. Thus, the Tories’ 40% of the popular vote (up 2% since the 2008 election) translated to 166 of the 305 seats in Parliament (a gain of 23). Recall that John McCain won 45.7% of the vote in the 2008 presidential campaign.
- Timing of terms of office. If President Obama had run for re-election yesterday — well, maybe not yesterday, the day after announcing the end of Osama bin Laden — he might very well have lost (depending on the vagaries of the electoral college and who the GOP ran against him). As it was, of course, the Republicans did win big in the 2010 midterms and stand to do so again in 2012 regardless of the result of the presidential election. Also, one of the themes of this year’s Canadian election was that the opposition forced an election that Canadians “did not want” and considered to be a waste of money.
- Leadership/personality. Barack Obama was a singular individual at a unique time (financial collapse, Bush fatigue, etc.). The leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, meanwhile, former Oxford and Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff, who hadn’t lived in the country for 30 years before entering Parliament in 2006 (see the Conservatives’ hilarious and devastating attack ads), was a wooden campaigner who failed to connect with the average voter.
And so, even as 60% of Canadians voted for a party other than the Conservatives — 31% New Democrats (socialist/labor), 19% Liberal, 6% Bloc Quebecois (separatists), 4% Green — they will have a Tory majority government until (probably) October 2015. Given that social issues don’t play much of a role in Canadian public affairs, this is generally a good result for friends of liberty. Now that he has his majority, we’ll see how much more Prime Minister Harper moves in the free-market direction he has long said he would if given the opportunity.
For those interested in more than that basic synopsis and US/Canada comparison, read on below the fold.
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After bin Laden
As Chris Preble noted early Monday morning, Osama bin Laden is dead. In addition to celebrating V‑OBL Day, we should take a moment to reflect on wars of the last decade and the civil liberties we have sacrificed since September 11, 2001. Malou Innocent makes the case for reconsidering our foreign policy, and Jim Harper asks if he can have his airport back. We lay out these thoughts in more detail in this Cato video, After bin Laden.
The phrase “after bin Laden” has a nice ring to it. Cato held counterterrorism conferences in 2009 and 2010, and there’s more Cato work on counterterrorism and homeland security here.
U.S. Sugar Program Means Higher Prices and Short Supplies
Advocates of the U.S. sugar program like to claim they are protecting our “food security.” It turns out that trade barriers deliver higher prices for consumers while making our food supplies LESS secure.
According to a story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, titled “Sugar Squeeze in U.S.,” bad weather has curbed the amount of sugar cane produced in Florida and sugar beets in the Midwest. When combined with restrictive import quotas that virtually guarantee U.S. producers 85 percent of the domestic market, domestic sugar prices could soon spike upward.
Americans currently pay more than 36 cents for a pound of sugar, more than 50 percent above the world price. The sugar program not only imposes extra costs on American consumers but also hurts U.S. small businesses and industries that use sugar in their final products, such as bakeries, family restaurants, cereal companies, and confectioners.
Rising prices and constricted domestic supplies have prompted a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers in Congress to introduce legislation to dismantle the anti-competitive sugar program and to restore the freedom of Americans to buy sugar at global prices. A bill has been sponsored in the Senate by Richard Lugar, R‑Ind., titled “The Free Sugar Act of 2011.” A companion bill has been sponsored in the House by freshman Republican Bob Dold, whose suburban Chicago district has seen its candy industry decimated by high domestic sugar costs; and Democrat Earl Blumenauer, a long-time critic of U.S. farm programs and other trade barriers that disproportionately hurt poor families, such as our scandalously high tariffs on imported shoes.
In a Dear Colleague letter distributed last week, Dold and Blumenauer wrote,
According to a Commerce Department study, for every job protected by our antiquated sugar program, three American manufacturing jobs are lost. By eliminating U.S. sugar price controls and quotas, Congress can reverse this wasteful policy. With accelerating U.S. manufacturing job losses over the past few decades, Congress should no longer maintain an old and inefficient policy that destroys good-paying American jobs.
Here is a Cato op-ed and a Cato Capitol Hill Briefing, both from October 2009, on why the sugar program needs to be abolished.
Cato Unbound: The Politics of Family Size
In the 1970s, economists and demographers worried about the “population bomb” — world population was exploding, and many doubted there would be resources enough for everyone. At least two schools of thought emerged. One held that population needed to be curbed through public policy — perhaps coercively. The other school, always a minority view, held that human beings themselves were “the ultimate resource” — a phrase coined by economist Julian Simon. On this view, more people would mean more productivity and more creative minds brought to the task of providing for the species.
Since then, conditions have changed dramatically and in ways no one predicted. World population growth slowed at a pace far beyond what anyone thought possible, even in countries that didn’t adopt anti-natalist policies. Several countries are now below replacement fertility rates, and even the fastest-growing populations are slowing down.
Those who worried about the population bomb may worry a little bit less, but fans of Julian Simon shouldn’t be so pleased. This month’s Cato Unbound lead essay by Bryan Caplan examines the problem of world population with a framework strongly inspired by the late Professor Simon. Caplan recommends several policy initiatives that will encourage the growth at least of the American population while protecting individual rights and respecting individual choices.
Caplan’s views here, as elsewhere in his work, are iconoclastic. We’ve invited a distinguished panel to discuss them over the course of the month: Economist Betsey Stevenson of the Wharton School, Columbia University historian Matthew Connelly, and historical economist Gregory Clark of UC Davis. Each will address Caplan’s argument using a range of methodological tools and with somewhat different political values.
Do be sure to check back often, or subscribe to Cato Unbound via RSS.
Ron Paul on Diane Rehm
Last week all the guests on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show said Ron Paul was bad, very bad, to question the legitimacy of the Federal Reserve Board. (Very near the end of the show.) Diane responded by saying that Paul would be interviewed on the show the following week, but the show’s website didn’t confirm that. Now it does.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, at 10 a.m. ET, Ron Paul discusses his new book Liberty Defined on the Diane Rehm Show. Expect tough questions and lots of callers.
If taxes and inflation make it impossible for you to afford Paul’s new book, you can always read his book The Case for Gold for free online.
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Can I Have My Airport Back Please?
Even while it was a rumor that President Obama would announce that Osama bin Laden had been killed, Americans began to digest the ramifications, asking, for example, “can I have my airport back please?”
Pleasing though it is to have in contemplation, the question is premature. Students of terrorism, such as those who attended our 2009 and 2010 counterterrorism conferences, know that the killing of bin Laden will have little direct effect on the network he spawned. Its indirect, discouraging effect on terrorism is something I mused about in an earlier post.
What about the effects on the rest of us, the people and actors in our great counterterrorism policymaking apparatus?
Osama bin Laden’s survival helped shore up the mystique of the terrorist supervillain, which has fed counterterrorism excess such as the Transportation Security Administration’s domestic airport security gauntlet. Now that bin Laden is gone, the public will be more willing to carefully balance security and privacy in our free country. By a small, but important margin, courts will be less willing to indulge extravagant government claims about threat and risk.
My friends in the national security bureaucracy may honestly perceive the contraction in their power as carelessness about a threat that they have dedicated their professional lives to combating, but the Declaration of Independence touts security only once, and freedom twice, in the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The counterterrorism debate continues.